Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought

Ahh, I see. Christian extremists are just as dangerous because they operate legally and without violence. Gotcha.

(Now there's your straw man. :wink:)



Are you referring to events that occurred 300 years ago? Surely you are not hinging your allegiance to rabel's claim upon these historical events?

It has been roughly a year since the Christian Embassy fund raiser video was in the limelight. In that video, much of which was filmed inside the pentagon, many high ranking military officers praise the evangelical Christian Embassy's efforts within the pentagon.

Here is one excerpt from that video.

"I found a wonderful opportunity as a director on the joint staff, as I meet the people that come into my directorate," [/color]Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr. says in the video. "And I tell them right up front who Jack Catton is, and I start with the fact that I'm an old-fashioned American, and my first priority is [1] my faith in God, then [2] my family and then [3] country. I share my faith because it describes who I am."[/color] {brackets added for emphasis}

Catton also said the Christian Embassy helped inspire Christian faith throughout the Pentagon: "I think it's a huge impact because you have many men and women who are seeking God's counsel and wisdom as we advise the chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and the secretary of defense. Hallelujah."[/color]

The video is available here.

Play the full video.

Ticomaya said
Karl Barth always said that the difference between Islam and Christianity is Christians have always taught to practice the good and avoid evil, whereas Islam teaches to COMMAND the good and DETROY evil.

Quite a philosophical foundational variance no?

There seems to be quite a difference between the USA and UK when it comes to Christianity and the level of its profile, I think.

I was reading an article about this subject the other day (Huckabee?) and it was bang on when it came to religion in politics and how political campaigns over here (UK) go out of their way to avoid any connection to religion, for fear of any particular party being considered a bunch of god fearing nutters, or words to that effect.
Even Blair had to wait 'til he was out of office before breaking the news that he was converting to Catholicism. He actually used the "nutter" reference when trying to explain why he didn't do it whilst serving as PM.

Yet over in the USA, it seems that "God" plays a very large part in the "sell" made by a party in a run up to an election. It appears to me to be a very necessary bandwagon for everyone to jump on.

I know politics and military are two different things, but if the USA can go so head over heels with involving religion in their politics, it would seem to be a logical assumption to think that it is also infiltrating its military.

Thankfully, I couldn't for one minute envisage our military going down this route. If one of our top brass starting going about Halleluja-ing everyone, he'd be out on his ear in no time.

They are just as dangerous since when they gain control the will shove their damned religion down your throat. The first ammendment be damned.It is important to remember that Freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion.

The Air Force Academy's force-fed evangelism
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
Published May 29, 2005


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In my book, true heroism is defined by those who talk truth to power even to their own detriment. It includes people like Sherron Watkins, the former Enron vice president who blew the whistle on the financial manipulations that hid the company's crushing debt. (Go see the movie Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room for all the gory details.)

Watkins has become famous for her rectitude, but rarely do such acts lead to public accolades. Bad endings for the truth sayer are far more likely.

Capt. MeLinda Morton is a prime example. A chaplain at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Morton has been trying her mightiest to end the force-fed evangelism that is rampant on campus. Rather than thanks, her outspoken defense of the Constitution has gotten her booted from her job and a one-way ticket to exile in Japan - known as "reassignment" in military speak.

Her fight against proselytizing is taking place in Colorado Springs - control central for the most radical elements of the Christian Right. James "tolerance is a homosexual plot" Dobson's Focus on the Family is based there - a concern so large that there is no need to use a street address on a letter. Also nearby is the Officers' Christian Fellowship, an organization whose express purpose is to create "ambassadors for Christ in uniform." Its slogan is: "Christian Officers Exercising Biblical Leadership to Raise up a Godly Military." (That's funny, the Taliban say something very similar.)

There is significant cross-pollination between the local evangelical groups and the Academy, to a point where cadets are reportedly cajoled, harangued and even bullied into being "saved."

Mikey Weinstein, an attorney in Albuquerque, N.M., has been collecting complaints of this nature for more than a year and says he has about 150 of them. Weinstein is a graduate of the Academy, as is his elder son. But when his youngest son, who is a member of the class of 2007, was called a "f--- Jew" and taunted as a Christ killer, Weinstein got involved.

"The Air Force Academy is suffering from a constitutional disease," Weinstein said. "They are trying to tell people whose God is best." He said his complaints have received little more than lip-service.

"I love and cherish the Academy," he said, "but it's been overtaken by the evangelical right."

Morton, a 48-year-old Lutheran minister, has seen this up close over the past 2 1/2 years. She says the academy is sending cadets the message that adopting Christian conservative evangelical values is key to their success at the school.

"There's nothing wrong with people reaching out to cadets," Morton said. "But when the purpose is to proselytize and make the military into a godly force, then that's inappropriate."

Fisher DeBerry, the Academy's head football coach, exemplifies the explicit sectarianism on campus. Two weeks after the academy had ostensibly begun religious sensitivity training, DeBerry posted a banner in the football locker room that read: "I am a Christian first and last *** I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."

Challenging authority is difficult in any institution, but it's career suicide within a military structure that maintains a strict hierarchy in which the way to advance is to parrot what those above you say. Morton, who was executive officer of the 16 chaplains, knew what she was risking when she started criticizing the religiously freighted climate and repudiating the Academy's official stance that remedial steps were being taken.

Since coming forward, Morton has been removed from her administrative position and has orders to transfer to Okinawa by the end of July. The Academy has said in news reports that the posting is a routine reassignment. (It will no longer discuss her case with the media.) Morton says the move is to get rid of her.

"I spent 2 1/2 years putting in 16-hour days," Morton said. "Now I have no specific duties."

The recent publicity over the religious atmosphere has put pressure on the Pentagon. Forty-five members of Congress joined a letter this month telling the Air Force, in effect, "we're watching." A Pentagon task force was dispatched to investigate the allegations. But the group didn't even bother to contact Weinstein (who calls it a "mask force.") As to Morton, she said the group spoke with her just hours before briefing the Air Force's acting secretary - giving it no time to investigate her claims.

It looks like a classic whitewash in the making.

The Academy has just recently emerged from a scandal over the insensitive way the rapes of female cadets were handled. Now it's accused of conversion by intimidation. The leadership either has the sense of a flea or is seeking to dissuade women and non-evangelicals from attending the Academy. I wonder which?

They'll "shove their damned religion down your throat"? Are you kidding me? They sound about as dangerous as Amway salesmen.

Who would you rather have at your door, an Amway salesman or an Islamic-fascist jihadist?

(On second thought ... don't answer that.)



How have the Christian fundamentalists abridged your First Amendment rights?

Tico
Neither an islamic- facist or Christian- facist is welcome at my door. They both sell the same type of poison.

Tico
One time shall I answer you. You are foisting a strawman posting. I didn't say this was done in the name of christanity, you did. I said that Bush used religion for a political war. Most christian religions were against the Iraqi war. Only the U.S. christian fundamentalists wanted a war for reasons of money just as the Vietnam war was. Even as the war was started most people in the know realized that Iraq wasn't any danger to the U.S.. Bush wanted the war before he stole the White House and had made plans for it before 9/11. Bush is the one who has conversations with God. Most people who claim to have conversations with God are in an institution which is where Bush should be.

Published on Tuesday, August 1, 2006 by the Daytona Beach News-Journal
America Struggles With Its Own Evangelical Taliban
by Pierre Tristam

At this late stage of the Bush rapture, American evangelism is a lot like the Exxon Valdez: Massive, sloshing with oily energy and not a little drunk on its power as it steers through hazards of its own designs. The moment evangelicals began tearing down the church-state wall, the rubble became their shoals. The wreck will be ugly. It will take years to mend because, as one of their own, Minnesota's Rev. Gregory Boyd, recently put it: "Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn't bloody and barbaric. That's why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state." Meanwhile, too much damage is being done by policies keyed to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" not to have lasting consequences abroad and at home.

The wreck's effects abroad are spreading. Remember William Boykin, the Army lieutenant-general who went around Christian congregations after Sept. 11, telling them how he knew that "my" God "was bigger than his" (one of Osama's lieutenants), "that my God was a real God, and his was an idol"? Instead of being relegated to sorting junk mail in a Pentagon basement, Boykin was promoted to undersecretary of defense for intelligence -- including the supervision of prison interrogations. It's "his" God against the jihadis now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and apparently "his" God against the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions.

The evangelical assault on secular values at home is no less dangerous than its Islamic variant. It's a difference of degrees, not substance. The difference is hard to see when evangelicals eagerly thump for blood-letting abroad or stage-manage it like Boykin and his crusading commander-in-chief do. John Hagee is a Texas evangelical and leader of that hybrid known as the Christian Zionist movement. He commands a huge following and the ear of politicians, Bush among them. Earlier this month Hagee led a rally of 3,500 evangelicals at a Washington hotel, where he called Israel's attacks on Lebanon a "miracle of God" and proof that Israel was doing God's work. Hagee was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying that for Israel to show restraint would violate "God's foreign policy statement" toward Jews. Bush sent Hagee a message of praise for "spreading the hope of God's love and the universal gift of freedom."

When he's not thumping for Israel, Hagee raises money for Republican causes and beats war drums in line with his clash-of-civilizations thesis. "This is a religious war that Islam cannot -- and must not -- win," he wrote in a recent book. He also sees the United States heading toward a nuclear confrontation with Iran, itself a fulfillment of a joyful promise: "The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching," he writes. "Rejoice and be exceedingly glad -- the best is yet to be." In other words, war is a good thing, rapturous and necessary and sealed with a kiss from God, as the world edges toward Armageddon. The Bush presidency is that evangelical view's self-fulfilling prophesy. Militants for Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban speak the very same language. Only the roles are reversed.

Gregory Boyd, author of those words in the first paragraph about every Christian theocracy's sorry history, is the sort of evangelical who wants to prevent a complete wreck. His profile appeared in the Sunday New York Times, yang to Hagee's Journal yin three days earlier. Boyd wants evangelicals out of politics, out of cheering for war and turning politics and patriotism into "idolatry." "America wasn't founded as a theocracy. America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies," he tells his Minnesota congregation. Boyd, writes The Times, "lambasted the 'hypocrisy and pettiness' of Christians who focus on 'sexual issues' like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson's breast-revealing performance," as well as the claim the evangelicals alone know the right values. "All good, decent people want good and order and justice," he says. "Just don't slap the label 'Christian' on it."

Boyd and Hagee are the good cop and bad cop of American evangelism as it pulpits its way to 50 million congregants and beyond. The bad cop is winning right now. It's always easier to destroy than build. We should know. Boyd and Hagee have their twins all over the world of Islam, where theocratic thumping is the regressive rule. There, too, the likes of Hagee are winning. But that's not our battle. It's Islam's to resolve, if it can. Our battle is with our own domestic Taliban, if it doesn't sink us on those shoals first.

You know that Brooklyn was always called the borough of churches.

I've usually been treated very nicely by those individuals that take their Christianity seriously, and just don't go to church out of habit, or to appease a relative, or to get brownie points for heaven. I can't say I've always been treated as nicely by secular Christians, or those that just go to church to pay lip service, so to speak.

We don't agree. WWII history might prove me right, in that it was outspoken clergy, that took their faith seriously, that found themselves in concentration camps in Nazi occupied Europe. I believe, if there were more fundamentalist Christians in Europe at the time of the Nazis, Europe, nor Germany, would never have fallen to the Nazis.

In my opinion, secular or those Christians that don't take their faith seriously have all the traits that humans are naturally born with. Serious Christianity has a way of ameliorating those human traits. Again, this is my opinion.

bm...


what a sad state of affairs.

The bible, blood, destruction, War profits, bomb factories going full speed, orphaned kids looking for food in the trash and sleeping in the street and christians in kevlar with machine guns.

Yes, thats what Jesus would do.

Satan could not do as good of a job. This kind of violence can only come from a divine sanction as it always has. Humans without god can rarley act like this under their own conscious. They first must be indoctrinated.

But whos will is it really?

Gods or mans?

Who stands to gain what?

And who loses?

The answers to these questions is the truth that will not be preached to the indoctrinated soldiers because truth is not part of evil.